Excuses, Excuses_MARCIA BARON

Abstract Justifications and excuses are defenses that exculpate. They are thereforemuch more like each other than like such defenses as diplomatic immunity, whichdoes not exculpate. But they exculpate in different ways, and it has proven difficultto agree on just what that difference consists in. In this paper I take a step back fromjustification and excuse as concepts in criminal law, and look at the concepts as theyarise in everyday life. To keep the task manageable, I focus primarily on excuses andexcusing activities, distinguishing them from justifications as well as from other closerelatives, in particular, forgiving and pardoning. I draw upon J.L. Austin’s classic‘‘A Plea for Excuses,’’ but expand on his account, suggesting that we offer excusesfor reasons besides those he mentions. My hope is that my examination of excusesand excusing activities will help us rethink our views on just how justifications andexcuses differ, views which often are worked out without much attention to howthese concepts function in everyday life and to the connection between offers ofexcuses and justifications and the ‘‘rules of civility.’’

Keywords Justification Æ Excuse Æ Civility Æ Forgiving Æ Pardoning ÆHolding responsible Æ Exempting Æ Blaming Æ J.L. Austin

1. Justifications and excuses are defenses that exculpate. They are therefore muchmore like each other than like such defenses as diplomatic immunity, which does notexculpate. But they exculpate in different ways, and it has proven difficult to agreeon just what that difference consists in. In this paper I take a step back from justi-fication and excuse as concepts in criminal law, and look at the concepts as they arisein everyday life. To keep the task manageable, I’ll focus primarily on excuses and

M. Baron (&)Department of Philosophy, Indiana University Bloomington, Sycamore Hall 026, 1033 E,Third Street, Bloomington, IN 47405-7005, USAe-mail: [email protected]

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Crim Law and Philos (2007) 1:21–39DOI 10.1007/s11572-006-9001-2

ORI GI N A L P A PE R

Excuses, excuses

Marcia Baron

Published online: 14 November 2006� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006

excusing activities. Justifications will enter in secondarily, for the purpose of dis-tinguishing excuses from their close relatives.

I’ve chosen this topic partly because it is interesting in its own right (and becausea rereading of Austin’s ‘A Plea for Excuses’ inspired me), and partly because of ahope that such a study will bear fruit for criminal law theory,1 perhaps in one ormore of the following ways. A better understanding of the borders between excusingand its neighbors may improve our grasp of why defenses, such as provocation, thatare confusing (confusing in ways that raise questions about what exactly their con-tent should be), are confusing. Relatedly, the reasons for discontent over certainways of explicating other defenses and adapting them to fit cases to which they seemnot to apply as they should2 may emerge more clearly when we examine our prac-tices of excusing; better solutions may emerge, as well. I shall not explore thesepossibilities here, nor the related possibility that we can better evaluate our sen-tencing practices—more specifically, our bases for mitigation, and perhaps forpardon and for parole—if we have a clearer sense of our excusing practices outsideof the context of criminal law and of the differences between excusing and nearrelatives, such as forgiving.

I also hope that an examination of excuses will lead some of us to revise our viewson how justifications and excuses differ and what exactly excuses are–and I do notexempt my own views. But I also recognize that my views are bound to shape thisinquiry, since they affect my collection and interpretation of the data. For thatreason, I should declare them before proceeding further. (I underscore that it is notthe aim of this paper to defend them, nor is it my aim to retain them.)

First, I think that there is a meaningful distinction between justifications andexcuses, and that it is important to be able to employ both concepts in relation topast conduct.3

Second, I hold that if an action is justified, it is, all things considered, not wrong.I thus reject the view, held by some legal theorists, that to be justified an action hasto be better than merely permissible.4

Third, to excuse is to say that what the agent did was wrong, or at least untoward,but that it would be unfair to blame him for the action. Why would it be unfair? Myanswer (provisionally) is: It is because of certain features of the agent (features thatare distinctive, not features that are true of most adult humans), or certain featuresof the situation together with features assumed to be true of most humans (including

1 That hope reflects a belief that the concepts of justification and excuse should function in law atleast roughly the way they do in everyday life. This is not to deny that the moral concepts we employin everyday life might need to be cleaned up; my idea is not that we should enshrine in criminal lawmoral concepts (much less, conceptions) as they are accepted and employed in everyday life.Likewise, I am not claiming that whatever excuses in an extra-legal context should also excuse in thecriminal law; for one thing, sometimes what excuses in everyday life will get one off, but by defeatingthe mens rea, rather than by excusing. Nor am I claiming (nor do I think it true) that exculpatoryconcepts should have the same application or extension in criminal law that they have in othercontexts. I am grateful to Antony Duff for prompting me to clarify my view.2 For instance the self-defense claims of battered women who kill their batterers when they areasleep or otherwise off guard, and the resistance some of us have to subjective standards as a solutionto the problem posed by such cases.3 This is not to deny that they are often hard to distinguish, and that many defenses involve elementsof both justification and excuse.4 See e.g. Finkelstein (1996), Robinson (1988, p. 665). For an excellent discussion of Finkelstein’sessay, see Pendleton (1996), especially pp. 664–665.

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the agent in question). Excuses divide, accordingly, into two types: (a) those(insanity being the paradigmatic instance) that come into play because of somefeature of the actor that differentiates him from most adults and makes it verydifficult for him to act as the law requires, and (b) those (such as duress) that comeinto play because the situation was such that it was extremely difficult for that actorand would be extremely difficult for most actors to avoid acting wrongly or unlaw-fully.

This sketch does not aim to lay out sufficient conditions. Many details wouldneed to be added, including constraints on what sorts of actions can be thusexcused (for some crimes might be too heinous to be excusable, at least on thesorts of grounds that (b) covers, while others, though not quite that bad, might beheinous enough that they are excusable only if the level of difficulty is excep-tionally high). One of the more interesting constraints governing (b) is thatdepending on the particular responsibilities the actor has accepted and the par-ticular circumstances, the fact that it would be extremely difficult for most actorsand is extremely difficult for her to avoid acting wrongly might not suffice toexcuse her. In certain circumstances, more is expected of a firefighter than of therest of us; in others, more is expected of someone trained in self-defense than ofthe rest of us; and so on. An added twist is that we sometimes relax therequirement and allow (e.g.) a duress defense for teenagers when we would notallow it for adults.5

A further background belief—subject to revision—that shapes this paper is thatjustification does not require truth, but does require reasonable belief. Thus,whereas some legal theorists hold that if Joe reasonably but mistakenly believedthat Jack was attacking him and used force to thwart what he took to be an attack,Joe has an excuse for having so acted but was not justified, I want to say that hewas justified.6

A word is in order as to just what I am doing in this paper. Is it linguistic analysis?Not exactly. I am not particularly interested in the difference between saying‘He clumsily trod on the snail,’ and ‘Clumsily he trod on the snail’ (not to mention‘He trod clumsily on the snail’ and ‘He trod on the snail clumsily’) (Austin, 1979, p.199). I am interested in examining when and why and how we offer excuses—and tellS that he has an excuse, and suggest to T that we should excuse S. I have also come,through working on this topic, to pay attention to just what it is that we do withexcuses: we offer them, claim to have them; we excuse others, but do we confer themon others? And when we ask others to excuse us, are we asking them for an excuse?Or are we asking them to recognize that excusing conditions apply? More on thatshortly.

2. Data collecting is often complicated by unclarities about what counts as a datumof the sort under investigation. That is certainly the case here, where the question

5 See Hudson and Taylor [1971] 2 QB 202. I thank Michelle Madden Dempsey for bringing this caseto my attention.6 See Baron (2005a). I also believe—though this will not be at issue in this paper—that it isimportant to preserve the distinction between ‘affirmative’ or ‘true’ defenses (both justifications andexcuses), and defenses that negate the mens rea or the actus reus of the offense: see Dressler (2001,pp. 201–202).

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of what counts as an excuse (more precisely, as an excusing activity), is complicatednot only by disagreements concerning (among other things) whether an action basedon a false but reasonable belief can be justified, or only excused, but also by the‘rules’ of civility. To illustrate, I’ll quote a passage from an article by Douglas Husak.

Consider everyday situations in which persons request an excuse. Sneezingor coughing in public, or accidentally brushing someone in a crowded place,provide typical occasions in which persons utter the words ‘excuse me.’What implications do speakers convey by this utterance? Anyone who asksto be excused after he accidentally jostles someone on a sidewalk would besurprised to learn that his words concede that his act was unjustified. Aspeaker would be especially vehement in resisting this alleged implication iftold that unjustified acts are wrongful. More likely, he would insist he didnothing wrong at all. The theorist may be puzzled about how the speakercould believe an excuse to be appropriate in these circumstances. But aslong as our criterion of accuracy is what speakers of English say, it is thetheorist, and not the speaker of English, who should be puzzled. In light ofthis linguistic evidence, commentators who purport to be guided by suchusage must be prepared to revise their views.7

Without endorsing the view that ordinary language is an appropriate criterion ofaccuracy, Husak is challenging the claim that ordinary language supports the thesisthat justifications and excuses are mutually exclusive. My concern is with hisassumption that the examples he offers are instances of requesting an excuse.8

Perhaps they are; but it is by no means evident that that is the case. ‘Excuse me,’said when we have coughed, or have accidentally jostled someone, is a politeutterance,9 rather like ‘Gesundheit’ or ‘God bless you,’ said when someone elsesneezes. We need to be cautious about inferring much from such utterances, and itis not at all clear that we should count ‘Excuse me’ as requesting (or offering) anexcuse. I will bracket such uses, and simply point out that the fact that the word‘excuse’ is used does not establish that we have a case of offering or requesting anexcuse.

3. Although I don’t think that ‘Excuse me’ is a good place to begin an exami-nation of excuses, I do not want to ignore the relevance of ‘rules’ of civility toexcusing activities. To give civility its due, I’ll examine some instances of offering

7 Husak (2005, p. 566). I should add that ‘Excuse me’ apparently has a different connotation and arather different use in Britain than it does in the US. In Britain one would say ‘Sorry,’ or ‘Pardon me’rather than ‘Excuse me’ in such circumstances as those in Husak’s examples, while ‘Excuse me[please]’ would more typically be used when asking someone for directions or the time, or requestingof someone that he step to one side so that one can rush past (e.g. to catch one’s fleeing toddler, or atrain or plane). Indeed, saying ‘Excuse me’ in Britain (in circumstances where in the US it is quiteappropriate) can suggest that one thinks the addressee is (slightly) in the wrong, perhaps that she iswhere she should not be. I thank Jeanine Grenberg and Anthony Rudd for pointing this out to me.8 There is a further problem with Husak’s challenge. As Austin warned in ‘A Plea for Excuses,’ ‘itwill pay us to take nothing for granted or as obvious about negations and opposites’ (1979, pp. 191–192). Husak assumes that if the coughing is not justified, it must be unjustified; but there is no reasonto assume that one word or the other must fit.9 I am speaking here of American English.


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an excuse that are similar to the examples Husak gives, in that they are generallymotivated by a sense of civility, but different in that they are clearly not justpolite utterances.

Consider the following scenario: I arrive ten minutes late to a departmentmeeting. I later say to my department chair, ‘I’m sorry, but when I picked my son upfrom school, his teacher wanted to talk with me, and I just couldn’t get away.’ In fact,this is not exactly accurate; I was happy to talk with the teacher, and although I knewit was a possibility to say to her, ‘I have to rush to a department meeting; can we talkanother time?’ I chose not to. Knowing how hard it is to schedule a meeting with her,I thought it unwise to postpone the conversation even though it meant arriving lateto the meeting. What is important here is that I believed I did the right thing (or atleast, did not act wrongly), but knew it would be rude to say that to the Chair. So Ioffered an excuse, despite believing that I was justified. As I am envisioning it, thiswas not something I calculated; it is something I just found myself saying, because wefrequently offer an excuse (without meaning to deceive or even mislead), despitebelieving ourselves justified.10

It is striking how often civility calls for offering an excuse for one’s conduct eventhough one believes that one was justified.11 The underlying reason for so acting mayvary. Sometimes it is to avoid causing hurt feelings; sometimes it is to avoid taking astand along the lines of ‘X is more important than Y,’ where X and Y are eithercompeting reasons or competing courses of conduct. The speaker might not want toopen herself up to a challenge (‘Did you really think it more important to talk on thephone with Heidi than to be on time to meet me for lunch?’)12

This point must be borne in mind when we try to read off certain beliefs from thefact that the agent put forward an excuse. That the agent puts forward an excusewhile believing she acted justifiably does not show that she believes that her conductwas excusable as well as justifiable. Thus, contrary to Husak, it does not underminethe claim that ordinary language supports the thesis that justifications and excusesare mutually exclusive.13

10 Antony Duff questions whether this really is a case of offering an excuse despite believing oneselfjustified, rather than offering a justification in an excusatory way (2006, p. xx). That is a goodquestion, but I believe that the fundamental point I make holds either way: although we believeourselves justified, we couch our explanation of why we acted as we did as an excuse, or in anexcusatory way; we do not present it straightforwardly as a justification.11 Not that it always does or even typically does. It does not in a frank or self-probing discussion witha close friend, nor in a situation where you are challenged or accused, and believe you were justifiedin acting as you did.12 Of course one is still vulnerable to a similar challenge if one pleads an excuse: ‘Why couldn’t youjust tell her that you had to meet someone and would call her later?’ But pleading, ‘I guess I shouldhave; I just couldn’t see a way to cut in like that’ is usually safer than arguing that it was moreimportant to talk to her.13 Although it is not my aim here to defend that thesis, I want to be clear on what it means—moreprecisely, what it has to mean if it is going to be defensible. One might try spelling it out as follows:one cannot both be justified in doing x and have an excuse for doing x. But that is not quite right. Theidea, rather, is that if I act justifiably in doing x, my action is not aptly described as ‘excusable.’ Oncewe ascertain that it is justifiable, it is not correct to call it excusable. So, why is it a mistake to say thatI cannot both be justified in doing x and have an excuse for doing x? Because I can ‘have an excuse’in the sense that were I not justified in doing x, an excusing condition would apply. E.g., a child mightlash out at someone in self-defense, and we might also say (depending on the child’s age) that if itwere not justifiable self-defense, nonetheless an excusing condition (‘infancy’) would apply.


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4. So far I have talked only about offering excuses for one’s own conduct. It isstriking that while civility often militates in favor of explaining one’s own con-duct in an excusatory way even though one thinks it justified, things are quitedifferent when one is addressing another, speaking with her about her conduct.Civility never calls for telling someone she has an excuse if one believes herjustified (unless one is advising her on tactics—on her options vis-a-vis an ac-cuser). Unless we are arrogant, condescending, or simply keen on putting theother person down, we do not tell her that she has an excuse if we see herconduct to have been justified, and hesitate to do so if we are uncertain whethershe was justified.

Likewise, if someone suggests to us that what we did is excusable when webelieve it to be justified, we will not be pleased (unless we are so relieved not to beblamed that we do not mind being thought to have done something for which anexcuse is needed). Imagine someone saying, ‘Everyone realizes you have a goodexcuse for what you did; after all, you’ve been unwell for some time [you’re verynew at this/that new drug the doctor put you on has made you very sluggish].’ Ifyou think what you did was justified, then—especially if you don’t think it was justborderline justified, i.e., that it just made it into the realm of the permissible—youwill very likely be miffed.14 You will probably feel like saying (even if you opt notto), ‘But what I did was not wrong, so why are you trying to explain my conduct interms of illness?’ We generally prefer to have others think of our conduct asjustified rather than as excusable.15 This is because when someone tells us thatthey, or others, excuse us for something we did, they think that we did somethingwe should not have done.16

I’ll turn shortly to Austin’s account of excuses. But first I want to locate excuses,or more precisely, excusing, in relation to forgiving.

5. Being forgiven is like being excused in the respect just mentioned: if we believe wehave done nothing wrong, we bristle (or are puzzled) if someone says she forgives us.

What distinguishes being forgiven from being excused? A first guess mightbe that forgiveness concerns graver matters. One would not ask to be excusedfor having (say) caused the death of the neighbor’s child by driving tooquickly into the driveway, not noticing the child was there; but one might askto be forgiven.

Although this is part of the story, it is only part—and a rather superficial part, atthat. As Jeffrie Murphy has pointed out, the conditions under which forgiving is anoption are disjoint from those under which excusing is. He explains, ‘We may forgiveonly what it is initially proper to resent; and, if a person has done nothing wrong or

14 Note that my assumption that an action is justified so long as it is permissible affects this sentenceand the following one.15 Generally, not invariably: see Baron (2005b, pp. 605–609).16 Another reason, applying to some, but not all instances of being excused, is that we prefer to beengaged by others in a way that engages our reasons and engages us as rational beings. I thank toSophia Reibetanz for suggesting this additional reason. I say that this applies only to some instancesbecause not all grounds on which people are excused involve, as Strawson puts it, a suspension of‘ordinary reactive attitudes.’ See Strawson (1968).


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was not responsible for what he did, there is nothing to resent.’17 What we forgive isnot something that we could instead have excused, and vice versa, because ‘to excuseis to say this: What was done was morally wrong; but, because of certain factorsabout the agent (e.g., that he is insane), it would be unfair to hold the wrongdoerresponsible or blame him for the wrong action’ (Murphy, 1988, p. 20). Although Iwould take issue with his explanation of why it would be unfair—I don’t think it hasto be because of certain factors about the agent—I agree that to excuse past conductis to say that it would be unfair to hold the wrongdoer responsible for the action or toblame him for it. And thus, since there was nothing to resent, there is nothing toforgive.18

But I also want to draw attention to structural differences between excusing andforgiving. One can only be forgiven by someone. One cannot have forgivenesswithout having someone’s forgiveness. By contrast, an excuse is something that onecan have without having received it from anyone. In fact, it may be that an excuse issomething that one can have only without having it from someone. Whether that isthe case I’ll consider later.19

How does being justified compare, in this respect, to being excused and to beingforgiven? It differs from both, but is more like being excused. One can be forgivenby another (or by oneself), and in no other way. By contrast, justification can never

17 Murphy (1988, p. 20). I do not endorse the implication that when one is excused one is ‘notresponsible for what he did,’ unless this means only that one should not be held responsible for whatone did. In Getting Even (Murphy, 2003), Murphy clearly takes the view that being excused entailsthat one was not a fully responsible agent: ‘To regard conduct as excused...is to admit that theconduct was wrong but to claim that the person who engaged in the conduct lacked substantialcapacity to conform his conduct to the relevant norms and thus was not a fully responsible agent.’But clearly this is not true of some excuses, e.g., duress; there is no reason to think that the personwho acted under duress was not a fully responsible agent. Whether it is true of any excuses isdebatable, but it is evident that it is not true of all. The part of the passage from Murphy’s ‘For-giveness and Resentment’ quoted above that I do endorse—that we may forgive only what it isinitially proper to resent and that if a person has done nothing wrong, there is nothing toresent—Murphy retracts in Getting Even. He writes that he now thinks it ‘a mistake to defineforgiveness so narrowly. It is more illuminating...to think of forgiveness as overcoming a variety ofnegative feelings that one might have toward a wrongdoer—resentment, yes, but also such feelings asanger, hatred, loathing, contempt, indifference, disappointment, or even sadness’ (2003, p. 59). I donot see how overcoming indifference, disappointment, or sadness could amount to forgiveness,although I can see the point of saying that forgiveness requires that one overcome not only one’sresentment but also these other emotions, if one has them (though the criterion is then perhaps toostringent; can’t I forgive yet still feel sad about what happened?). His earlier account was better:unless one overcomes one’s resentment, one does not forgive. Self-forgiveness, of course, is different:it need not involve the overcoming of resentment, and indeed it is hard to see how it could. Perhapsit is reflection on self-forgiveness that leads some to favor a broader account of forgiveness. But weneedn’t take that route; an alternative is to acknowledge that self-forgiveness is somewhat differentfrom forgiveness, perhaps better understood as self-acceptance that has been attained throughovercoming (e.g.) self-hatred.18 See also Strawson (1968, p. 76): ‘To ask to be forgiven is in part to acknowledge that the attitudedisplayed in our actions was such as might properly be resented and in part to repudiate that attitudefor the future (or at least for the immediate future); and to forgive is to accept the repudiation and toforswear the resentment.’ This seems right, with the qualification that one can forgive even if theperson one is forgiving has not repudiated his objectionable attitude.19 A related concept is pardon. The noun ‘pardon’ functions more like ‘forgiveness’ than like ‘ex-cuse’: a pardon is issued to someone, and issued in a discretionary way. I beg your pardon and I begyour forgiveness, but I do not beg your excuse; I put forward an excuse in my defense but do not putforward a pardon (though I could put forward the fact that I have been pardoned—a different matteraltogether).


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be bestowed by another (though another can be instrumental in its coming to be thecase that one is justified). Excuse seems somewhere in between: one can have anexcuse without being excused by another (or by oneself), but perhaps not only thatway.

As noted, being forgiven and being excused have in common this feature: if toldyou are forgiven, or excused, when you think that what you did was justified, youare likely to resent this (especially if you are told that you are forgiven). Oneexception comes to mind: perhaps what you did was, all things considered, justi-fied, as the lesser of two evils; nonetheless, it wounded me terribly, and I’ll neverbe the same.20 It is plausible to claim that I have standing to forgive you despiteyour having been justified in acting as you did. When one opts for the lesser of twoevils, there may still be someone to apologize to, someone who has standing toforgive. There is a moral cost, and if the cost is large and not well distributed,those who bear the brunt of it are at the very least owed an apology. There is thusindeed something to forgive (or to decide not to forgive) even though the actionwas justified.

This exception applies only to forgiving, not to excusing. In a situation where wefeel wronged, yet recognize that the person who wronged us might have indeedchosen the lesser of two evils and thus be justified, it makes sense to wonder whetherto forgive him, but not whether to excuse him. Why is this? Part of the explanation isan extension of a point drawn from Murphy: that you bore the brunt of the evilcreates logical space for anger and resentment and thus also for you to overcome theanger and resentment, and thus forgive; but it doesn’t create any space for excus-ing.21

Also relevant is the fact that forgiving is more ‘personal’ than excusing, and morediscretionary. Only certain people have standing to forgive the wrongdoer, and theyhave standing because they were wronged by him or her or are stand-ins for thewronged person(s). Within limits, whether to forgive the wrongdoer is up to theperson who has standing to forgive. I say ‘within limits’ because a person can fail in aparticular instance to forgive when forgiveness is clearly called for. Excusing is quitedifferent; one needs no special standing vis-a-vis the wrong or the wrongdoer toexcuse. Moreover, to say ‘We excuse you’ is usually to say ‘We recognize thatexcusing conditions apply’ or ‘We recognize that you have an excuse/should beexcused.’ To excuse is thus generally not to confer on another an excuse, but torecognize that the person has an excuse.

A closely related structural difference between excusing and forgiving is thatexcuses are generally something we offer for our conduct, not something we request,except when we request excuses in the sense of exemptions. By contrast, forgiveness

20 This thought was inspired by Williams (1981), but is a little different from his suggestion. I amimagining that A might acknowledge that B’s conduct was justified but still feel wronged and havestanding to forgive B, and I am supposing that A’s complaint can be justified even though B wasjustified in acting as he did. Williams’ claim about justification is different: A’s complaints arejustified and A ‘may quite properly refuse to accept the agent’s justification which the rest of us mayproperly accept’ (1981, p. 37).21 One might challenge this claim, arguing that the person who bore the brunt of that ‘lesser evil’could have opted to overlook the fact that the agent caused her so much pain, and in so doing excusehim. I don’t think that would be an instance of excusing. Overlooking misconduct may be a way ofexcusing (as I suggest in Sect. 8), but I doubt that overlooking the fact that conduct that I recognizeas justified imposed great hardship on me can be.


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can only be requested (or offered by the party doing the forgiving). (I’ll revisit theclaims in this paragraph and the last in Sects. 7 and 8.)

Having located excuses in relation to forgiving and to justification, I want toacknowledge another near relative from which both offering an excuse andoffering a justification should be distinguished: giving an explanation of one’sconduct (or of another’s conduct) that is merely an explanation. It is often notclear whether someone is merely explaining, rather than defending, her conduct,but nonetheless (indeed partly because of that) the distinction needs to be borne inmind.

6. I turn now to Austin’s account, specifically to the answers that he gives to thefollowing questions: ‘When, then, do we ‘‘excuse’’ conduct, our own or somebodyelse’s? When are ‘‘excuses’’ proffered?’ He answers:

In general, the situation is one where someone is accused of having donesomething, or (if that will keep it any cleaner), where someone is said to havedone something which is bad, wrong, inept, unwelcome, or in some other of thenumerous possible ways untoward. Thereupon he, or someone on his behalf,will try to defend his conduct or to get him out of it (Austin, 1979, pp. 175–176).

Austin then explains that one may defend one’s conduct by arguing that what he didwas in fact not bad, thus offering a justification, or by admitting ‘that it wasn’t a goodthing to have done’ but asserting ‘that it is not quite fair or correct to say baldly ‘‘Xdid A,’’’ thus offering an excuse. The reason why it is not quite fair or correct mightbe that X was ‘under somebody’s influence, or was nudged’; alternatively, theincorrectness might attach to the word ‘did’ in ‘X did A,’ as when the action was‘partly accidental, or an unintentional slip.’ Or it might be that ‘it isn’t fair to say hedid simply A—he was really doing something quite different and A was only inci-dental, or he was looking at the whole thing quite differently’ (Austin, 1979, p. 176).A few paragraphs later: ‘In the one defence, briefly, we accept responsibility butdeny that it was bad: in the other, we admit that it was bad but don’t accept full, oreven any, responsibility’ (1979, p. 181). (He hedges later, saying that the term‘responsibility’ ‘seems not really apt in all cases: I do not exactly evade responsibilitywhen I plead clumsiness or tactlessness, nor, often, when I plead that I only did itunwillingly or reluctantly....’ (1979, p. 181).)

Notice how Austin goes about answering his questions. He zeroes in on caseswhere someone is said to have done something untoward, and where either he orsomeone else tries to defend his conduct or ‘get him out of it.’ Offering an excuse isone way this is done. Austin’s approach limits his discussion of excuses to instanceswhere an excuse is offered to defend someone. As I hope to show, we offer excusesfor reasons besides those he mentions. I don’t intend this mainly as a criticism ofAustin; he said ‘In general,’ and I see myself as expanding on his account rather thanchallenging it.

6.1 Austin speaks only of offers of excuses, for oneself or someone else, that arereactive, responding to an accusation. This leaves out several things. First, wesometimes offer an excuse to someone (either for ourselves or for a third party) inanticipation of an accusation, or because we suspect the person is silently harboring a


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complaint against us (or against the third party). Also not covered are excusesoffered while, or even before, we are engaged in the conduct in question.

Excuses offered for something one is doing, or is about to do, frequently have aslightly different function than those Austin highlights. Often they are pleas not tobe judged harshly, or not to be misunderstood (and this is sometimes true of excusesoffered after the deed, as well).22 We see this in ‘Damned for All Time,’ sung byJudas in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ just before he tells the priests where they can findJesus. Although it is a little unusual as an example of pleading for understanding, inthat Judas is asking for reassurance from those least likely to disapprove of what heis doing, this is not entirely anomalous. It is not uncommon to realize at some levelthat what one is doing is at least morally dubious, yet want to believe otherwise; onemay, as Judas does, elicit assurance where one has the best hope of getting it in anattempt to silence one’s doubts. Judas tells the priests:

I came because I had to I’m the one who sawJesus can’t control it like he did beforeAnd furthermore I know that Jesus thinks so tooJesus wouldn’t mind that I was here with youI have no thought at all about my own rewardI really didn’t come here of my own accordJust don’t say I’mDamned for all time23

Note too the blend of excuse and justification components, a blend not uncommon indefenses, but unusually striking here. Judas puts forward a justification in a des-perate attempt to convince himself that he is indeed acting permissibly; at the sametime, he is trying to exonerate himself via an excuse. The excuse component is mostprominent in ‘I really didn’t come here of my own accord’ (and is depicted in the filmby tanks that force Judas towards the priests). I’ll comment shortly on ‘I have nothought at all about my own reward.’ The rest of the lyrics I have quoted are anattempt to justify, not excuse, except for the repeated plea, ‘Just don’t say I’mdamned for all time,’ a plea that reveals his awareness that he is not really justified.

6.2 I have been focusing so far on the first sentence in the quotation from Austin,pointing out that we also offer excuses when we anticipate criticism, and sometimesduring or even before the objectionable action, as Judas does. The lyrics in ‘Damnedfor All Time’ also show that the second sentence in the quotation—‘...he, orsomeone on his behalf, will try to defend his conduct or to get him out of it’—gives aslightly limited picture, for it happens quite often that one seeks to thwart aninference from one’s conduct to one’s character or to one’s sentiments (often one’ssentiments towards the other person). This is especially common when one is notresponding to an (overt) accusation, but guessing that the other person is silentlyjudging one, or anticipating that the other will form a negative judgment unlesssomething is done to put the matter in a favorable light. The aim may thus be notprimarily to defend one’s conduct or ‘get oneself out of it,’ but to show that it does

22 Austin’s remark that ‘I do not exactly evade responsibility when I plead clumsiness’ (1979, p. 181)might be hinting at this point.23 ‘Damned for All Time,’ lyrics by Tim Rice, from ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ October 1970.


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not reflect as badly on one as some might think, or more generally, that it does notmean what it might appear to mean. Thus Judas insists, ‘I have no thought at allabout my own reward’ (and explains, ‘Jesus can’t control it like he did before’) in aneffort to show that his motives are not self-interested.

An answer to the question ‘When do we offer excuses?’ thus needs to include thefollowing: It is common to offer excuses before anyone has raised an objection, whenwe know that what we have done is not (or might be thought not to be) all that itshould be. It is common to do so with the goal not of ‘disowning’ what we did—-though that happens too—but of showing that what we did has an explanation, anexplanation we want the other person to hear lest he take as the correct explanationone that reflects badly on us, or specifically on our attitude towards him.

It bears emphasis that a lot of our excusing activity is aimed at reassuring othersthat we take them seriously, value our friendship with them, and care for them. Forinstance, a friend who has not replied to my e-mails and phone call might say, whenshe finally does write, ‘I’m really sorry I haven’t been in touch. My nephew died lastsummer, and life has only begun to be back to normal for me.’ Her aim was probablynot to defend herself in the face of an anticipated accusation, but to let me know thather failure to write should not be thought to indicate that she does not value ourfriendship.24 One last example, of a different sort: someone says to you, when youpresent a paper to his department, ‘I’m sorry I can’t stay for the discussion of yourpaper; I have a nine-month old baby at home and need to get back.’ Now he mightbe offering a justification dressed up as an excuse, but more likely, he is offering anexplanation so that you will not think that he left because he did not like your paper.Here again the aim is to guard against a misreading of the agent’s sentiments orbeliefs, a misreading which, if not corrected, might cause unnecessary offense, reflectbadly on the agent or damage the relationship.

7. I have brought out some respects in which Austin’s way of addressing his ques-tions limits his account of excuses. In addition, the questions themselves are some-what limiting. He asks, ‘When, then, do we ‘‘excuse’’ conduct, our own or somebodyelse’s? When are ‘‘excuses’’ proffered?’ These are certainly good questions to ask,but they focus our attention entirely on one way that we excuse people: we excusepeople for their conduct, for something they have done. Yet we excuse people notonly for something (having done x), but also from something (having to do y). Toexcuse someone from some activity typically is to exempt her from something thatshe would otherwise have been required to do, though it is worth noting another waywe speak of excusing someone from something: one may be excused from (e.g.) ameeting or a jury, meaning that she is not permitted to remain in the meeting or onthe jury. (This euphemistic use of ‘excuse’ is similar to another euphemism: werelieve someone of her responsibilities.)

In this section I examine excuses that take the form of exemptions, keeping inmind a question that I raised earlier—Are bestowing excuses on others andrequesting excuses among the things we do with excuses?—and attending to thevariety of ways we exempt.

24 No doubt she also wants to let me know of her nephew’s death, but the fact that she brings it up toexplain why she has not been in touch with me in quite some time indicates that more than that isgoing on.


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7.1 Someone might be excused from a departmental duty because of his time-con-suming work on a college committee, a health problem, or because he is coming upfor tenure soon and needs extra time at this critical juncture in his career. Excusingsomeone in this sense amounts to exempting him from what would otherwise be arequirement, or at least an expectation.

The exempting I have just described is quite specific and explicit: ‘We excuse youfrom x.’ But we also excuse in a less explicit, clear-cut way. While I might announceto my teenage son, ‘You’re excused from washing the dishes, since you have an examtomorrow,’ I might instead simply ‘make allowances,’ and not just today, but over alonger period of time, perhaps because he has so much homework this year, or ispracticing a musical instrument so assiduously that I hate to undercut that bypushing him to do the chores I had asked him to do. I might, then, excuse—perhapsby overlooking—his having done only a few dishes. I decide, as we say, to ‘give himsome slack.’

Now, in the two examples of explicit exempting, is it correct to say that theperson is given an excuse, or that an excuse is bestowed on him? Not exactly.The chair excuses the untenured colleague, or I excuse my son, but what thisgives them is not an excuse, but a permission. The same holds, I believe, for allexplicit exemptions. Suppose you excuse me from a requirement (e.g., to go to ameeting), and someone later asks me disapprovingly, ‘Why weren’t you at themeeting?’ I do not offer an excuse when I explain, ‘I was told by the Chair thatthere was no need for me to attend.’ Rather, I convey that I did nothingimpermissible.

Things are different if an exemption is of the less explicit, less clear-cut variety,since such exemptions do not provide permission to do something otherwise notpermitted. So is the person in such cases given an excuse (albeit possibly only apartial one)? Almost, but not quite. Because the exemptions are not clear-cut, theagent cannot claim an excuse. The exemption provides her with a basis for anexcuse—a ground for hoping that she will be excused—and a consideration to pointto in pleading with another to excuse her. She asks to be excused,25 citing as aconsideration in her favor the feature in virtue of which she tends to be given someslack (at least by some people).

7.2 Many general, non-explicit exemptions are group-based. Here the exemption islikely to be from a general expectation, rather than from an explicit demand orrequirement. Absent-minded professors, for instance, are often accorded someallowances that probably would not be accorded to schoolteachers, accountants, orreal estate agents. They are not officially excused from keeping straight the thingsthat people are usually supposed to keep straight, but there is a bit more latitude forthem. Those regarded as geniuses are often given even more latitude (especially ifthey are quirky). The basis for this can be respect for the great contributions they aremaking (or anticipation of great contributions), conjoined with the notion thatgeniuses are less able to make these contributions if they are held to the samestandards as others; alternatively (or conjoined to this) it may also involve a beliefthat geniuses are incompetent at the tasks in question.

25 A further complication: it is a feature of our excusing practices that asking to be excusedsometimes backfires. Often one’s chances are better if one doesn’t ask.


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If the exemption is general, and especially if it is group-based, it is less likely to beclear, with respect to any act or omission that is at variance with the usualrequirement or expectation, whether the agent acted permissibly. He may thereforeneed to defend his conduct, and since he cannot invoke an explicit, specificexemption—which would establish that he acted permissibly—his defense willinvoke a general exemption. That yields, if things go his way, either a full or a partialexcuse.

With some exemptions it may not be clear even to the ‘exempter’ (even a veryanalytic, subtle exempter) whether the person she’s exempting is (partially) excusedor instead is, thanks to the exemption, acting permissibly (or very nearly so). Con-sider the pernicious group-based exemption expressed by the saying, ‘Boys will beboys,’ according to which it is (virtually) inevitable that boys will be mischievous, orrowdy, or aggressive (the implication being that this is not the case for girls). Aschoolteacher who subscribes to this view is likely to hold girls to a higher standard,and it may not be clear to her whether she thinks that certain actions are not reallywrong when done by boys but are when done by girls, or instead that actions that arewrong no matter who does them but that fall under the general heading of wild,rowdy, aggressive, etc. deserve a sterner reproach if girls perform them (the ideapresumably being that boys are less able than girls are to curb their aggression androwdiness, and are therefore less responsible for their rowdiness than girls are fortheirs).

7.3 Details aside, the following emerges from this survey of exemptions. Thestructure of excuses as exemptions is somewhat different from that of other excuses,at least as explained thus far. One gives or confers an exemption;26 people ask to beexcused (in the sense of exempted). But switching now to ‘excuses’ in the othersense, generally one does not confer excuses on others or give them excuses (apartfrom ‘giving’ in the sense of pointing out an excuse they might be able to offer fortheir conduct). We recognize that S has a good excuse, but the excuse does not comefrom us. I’ll consider a possible exception to this claim in the next section, and willalso consider a way in which we perhaps do ask to be excused (where this is notmerely asking the other to acknowledge that an excusing condition applies).

8. If you forgive me, you bring it about that I am forgiven, and the same holds forpardoning; moreover, I can only be forgiven or pardoned by someone. Excusing isdifferent, at least in this respect: I can have an excuse without anyone giving it to me;I have it because excusing conditions apply. Often such locutions as ‘you areexcused’ or ‘we excuse you’ mean simply ‘We recognize that excusing conditionsapply.’ But is it always like that? Or does excusing sometimes function more nearlylike forgiving and pardoning? I have suggested that exemptions provide a basis fordiscretionary excusing, i.e., excusing that is not simply recognition that excusingconditions apply. If I excuse someone in the sense of choosing not to be judgmental(to go easy on him, to ignore the untoward behavior) on the grounds that he iseccentric, an artist, a genius, or whatever, my excusing is similar to pardoning or

26 As noted, in the case of specific exemptions, although one can ask to be excused and may beexcused, the person who is excused has not an excuse, but a permission.


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forgiving in that it really does come from me: I bring it about that he is excused(though unless I have some special authority here, only that he is excused by me).

Is there any other way to excuse someone besides recognizing that he has anexcuse (or that excusing conditions apply), or exempting him from a requirement orexpectation? I think there is.27 We sometimes decide not to hold a misdeed againstsomeone—not to blame him—not because we recognize that excusing conditionsapply (not because the standard is too high, for instance, or because of a disability orbecause he is a child), but rather in a way that is really quite discretionary. The basiscould be a sort of humility: we know that we sometimes do the same thing, orsomething similar in moral magnitude (and in the effort or sacrifice that compliancewith the relevant norm typically entails). Or we might have the sense that there is akind of reserve of ‘credit’ to which people are entitled—or at least people whom wesee as basically good people, and who themselves are generous in their views ofothers’ conduct, slow to take offense or to be judgmental. We think we should ‘givethem a break’ or give them some slack, rather than hold against them every misdeed.

The only hesitation I have in counting this as another way of excusing someone isthat it is so similar to exempting. It is different from ‘specific’ exempting in that suchexempting can be done only by people who stand in certain relations to one—parentto child, department head to others in the department—whereas excusing thatresembles exempting in the way I have been describing can be done by anyone whomight otherwise have blamed the person for a particular misdeed. It is very similar togeneral exempting as I described it, but differs in that exempting requires a specialbasis, something which would apply to some people but not to others. The form ofexcusing I’m contemplating could be based on certain features of the persons—thatthey are themselves basically decent, and are not terribly judgmental—but need notbe.

If we do count this as another way of excusing, it provides an exception to some‘in general’ claims I put forward towards the end of Sect. 5, for it shows that excusingleaves room for more discretion than I indicated. It also calls for revisiting my claimthat we do not generally request excuses (apart from excuses in the sense ofexemptions). Perhaps ‘Give me a break’ is (when not a request to be exempted) arequest to be treated with leniency, i.e., an appeal that could be based on featuresspecial to the case but needn’t be, and might be based on nothing more than thatreserve of credit noted above. The same is true of third person statements: ‘Give hera break’ or ‘Cut her some slack.’28

9. In Sects. 6 and 7, I enumerated some types of excuses, or situations where excusesare put forward, that seem not to be covered by Austin’s account. His accountoverlooks excuses that are not reactions to another’s accusation (or implied accu-sation) of misconduct. Limiting myself now to those that are (or can be) suchreactions, I want to ask whether there is anything missing in Austin’s account of suchexcuses.

27 I owe this thought to Dennis Klimchuk, though I am not sure whether I have captured his idea, ormodified it in a way that he would not endorse.28 It might be claimed that ‘Please excuse me’ and ‘I hope you’ll excuse me’ are also requests to beexcused. I am reluctant to so classify them; they are polite utterances, and the fact that one could justas easily say (while, e.g., getting up from the dinner table to go to the restroom) ‘I am going to excusemyself’ suggests that such polite utterances are not best understood as requests to be excused.


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First, something mentioned earlier also applies here: even when we are reacting toanother’s accusation, our aim in offering an excuse need not be to defend ourconduct. Our focus may be on what (we suspect) it is thought to show about ourcharacter or our attitude towards the other person. But let’s look now for otherexcuses or excusing activities not covered by his account.

Austin’s characterization of excusing as claiming that it is not quite fair or correctto say that I did it very clearly covers excuses of the following sort: ‘It isn’t my fault;you were the one who was supposed to....’ It also covers ‘It was an accident’, andassertions that claim not only that it was an accident, but also that that I did not actnegligently: for example, ‘I’m so sorry that my car hit yours; I don’t know whathappened; I had the brakes checked just last week and was told they are fine, and yetthey failed just now.’ His account also covers the excuse of ‘I didn’t mean to’ wherethe idea is that although I did mean to do x, I didn’t realize it would cause y. But itdoes not cover some others: for instance, ‘You are holding me to too high a standard;I’m only 11.’ Nor, relatedly, does it cover a very standard form of excuse: disability-based excuses. We might say that someone should not be held responsible for what hesaid because, given his autism, he didn’t realize how upsetting his remark would be.Austin’s account would cover an excuse offered to show that he did not seek to hurtsomeone (covered by ‘it isn’t fair to say I did it’) but not an excuse offered to showthat he should not be blamed for the recklessness and insensitivity of the remark. ‘It istoo much to ask of me’ is an important basis for an excuse. In criminal law, this iscaptured in two ways: it is too much to ask of anyone in this situation (as in thedefense of duress); and it is too much to ask of me, given my particular disability.

Another plea to be excused—if that is what it is—that his account does not coveris ‘Give me a break,’ where one does not put forward a defense but asks, in effect, tobe given some slack, to be treated generously or mercifully rather than judgmentally.

10. A book prominently displayed in an airport bookstore has a title that caughtmy eye: He’s Just Not That into You: the No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys(Behrendt & Tuccillo, 2004). What kind of excuse or excusing activity is implied by‘No-Excuses’? Is it of a type covered by Austin’s account? I withstood the book’srepellence and investigated. The book draws attention to a tendency of many awoman (as the authors see it) to explain away evidence that a man in whom shehas a romantic interest is in fact not interested in her. She makes excuses for (e.g.)his failure to phone her, or his never having time to spend more than a few hourswith her. Now, conceived in one familiar way, making excuses for others is simplydefending them against an accusation—nothing newsworthy, and nothing thatAustin’s account doesn’t cover. But He’s Just Not That into You draws attention toanother way we sometimes speak of making excuses for others: we may makeexcuses for another not so much to defend him as to (re)interpret his behavior in away that is more in keeping with our hopes and fantasies. Here, ‘making excuses’means seeking to explain someone’s conduct in a way that permits us to hold ontoa belief about him that we are loathe to call into question, yet see there is reasonto doubt. ‘Making excuses’ (in this sense) is thus an exercise in self-deception. Thisnotion of making excuses for someone meshes well (apart from its pejorativeconnotation) with something I said earlier about offering excuses for myself toanother person: one aim is to show that my conduct does not mean what you mightthink it means. Likewise, making excuses for another might be an attempt to


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convince myself (or a third party) that his or her conduct does not really meanwhat I fear it means.

‘Making excuses’ carries a pejorative connotation; but the activity of trying toconvince oneself or a third party that someone’s conduct doesn’t really mean whatwe fear it means need not involve any dishonesty or be otherwise objectionable. Itmay reflect appropriate charity (maybe, though not necessarily, in light of adiscovery of some new fact about the person). ‘Offering excuses’ is the (mostly)non-pejorative equivalent to ‘making excuses,’ carrying no connotation that self-deception or (other) dishonesty is involved (though at the same time not implying anabsence of dishonesty, much less of a mistake).

When and why do we offer excuses for others? Mainly for the reasons indicatedabove: we defend someone against an accusation (and if this annoys our interlocutor,she may say, ‘Stop making excuses for him’); we may also, detecting the third party’sdisapproval, try to lead her to see the other person’s conduct in an entirely differentway. In the latter instance, we may, in citing an excusing condition, bring her to seehis conduct not merely as excusable, but as having an entirely different, unobjec-tionable meaning from that which she initially saw in it. Aspects of his conduct whichbefore seemed neutral may now seem heroic; aspects that she found objectionableno longer seem so. A student seems to me to be ‘blowing off’ my course until I learnthat he suffers from severe depression. His conduct—sitting in the corner, wearinghis overcoat throughout the seventy-five minute class, putting up his arm as if tobarricade himself from the rest of us—had come across as hostile, as announcing ‘Idon’t want to be here and am not going to be engaged.’ But now I see hero-ism—most days he manages to come to class! Citing an excusing condition can thusnot only serve to convince us that someone should not be held responsible for theconduct in question; it can lead us to interpret the conduct completely differently.

11. Before I conclude, I’d like to touch on a topic hinted at by my title. Why is it thatexcuses can be—and often are—so annoying?

The practice of excusing others has obvious benefits. It is unfair to hold people tostandards that are too high; it is reassuring to be excused when one tried hard butfailed. Insofar as the practice of excusing others is a good one, and insofar asexcusing conditions sometimes need to be pointed out to others, offering excusesshould generally be a good thing, too. If the practices of excusing—including offeringexcuses—are generally salutary, why can it be so annoying when people offer them?

Excuses become annoying mainly—but not only—when the person offering ex-cuses for herself does so too often. It is worth spelling out why this is so annoying. If Iam always five minutes late to pick my son up from school, and always have someexcuse—the traffic was worse than usual; I couldn’t find my keys; I was interceptedby a garrulous colleague; I was so immersed in my work that I lost track of thetime—he is likely to sense that I am trying to put the blame on circumstances when Ishould be accepting responsibility, that I am not making any effort to improve, andthat I am placing more importance on my activities and needs than on his. One suchexcuse may not be judged a ‘flimsy excuse,’ but after a while—after the behavior andthe excuses are repeated a few times—the excuses, as we say, wear thin. Even moreannoying is one particular way of avoiding responsibility: blaming it on someoneelse.


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A similar explanation can be given for why it is so annoying to have someonerepeatedly offer excuses for another person. In repeatedly making excuses for an-other I avoid treating him as someone who should own up to what he has done. Thismay have the effect (if he is aware that I am making excuses for him, or if my doingso leads others to treat him likewise) of helping him avoid taking responsibility forhis actions and altering his bad behavior. There is a further way in which it might beannoying: he may rightly resent my offering excuses for his behavior, finding thismeddlesome and perhaps condescending, as well.

If Sect. 8 is not misguided, and one can request to be excused (and not merelyexempted), we can pinpoint another reason why excuses become annoying: toofrequent requests for leniency—to be given ‘a break’—exhibit a kind of greed. Oneis expecting too much from that reserve of good will, and taking advantage of theother’s generosity.

The offering of excuses can also be annoying for another reason. In offeringexcuses, people sometimes over-dramatize certain conditions, treating them asexcusing conditions when it is not at all clear that they should exculpate, or that theyshould exculpate as fully as the speaker seems to think. There is very likely self-indulgence involved as well: treating something as an excusing condition for oneselfbut not (or not to the same extent) for others. (This feature applies to justificationsas well as to excuses.)

Excuses are also annoying when the person goes on too long, as if he is deter-mined to convince you. You may suspect willful dishonesty (or self-deception), buteven apart from that, his determination to convince you that he is not blameworthyis itself annoying, in part because a practice so tied to civility, and couched in thoseterms, is now employed to badger you into altering your view.

Excuses offered by someone who clearly believes himself justified are alsosometimes aggravating, but for slightly different reasons. There is somethingpatronizing about always offering an excuse when a justification would be more inorder (if any defense is to be given), or when one can see that the speaker believesherself justified (whether or not one agrees that she is). The same is true if thespeaker goes on too long about how much she would have liked to attend your party,etc. It may be irksome to have her act as if you care that much about her attendance,or worse, as if you are so easily offended that she has to ‘work on you’ to guardagainst your becoming upset with her.

As noted, some of the reasons why excuses grate on our nerves apply also to theoffer of a justification. That might suggest that what is annoying is simply the attemptto defend one’s conduct. I doubt that is all there is to it. The word ‘excuse’ carries anegative connotation that ‘justification’ seems not to have. We say ‘Excuses, ex-cuses,’ but not ‘Justifications, justifications’, and we say ‘That’s just an excuse’ butnot ‘That’s just a justification.’ Admittedly, ‘excuse’ has a broader sense as well asthe narrower ones that I have focused on in this paper; ‘excuses’ is sometimes usedloosely to cover all defenses.29 So ‘Excuses, excuses’ could be an expression ofexasperation with all attempts to defend oneself, and not only with excuses (nar-rowly conceived). I don’t think the same can be said of ‘That’s just an excuse,’however; it does not mean ‘That is just an attempt to defend yourself.’ At any rate, Iwill proceed on the hunch that excuses have a bad press beyond any that (attempted)justifications have.

29 I thank Antony Duff for pointing this out to me.


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If there is something especially annoying about excuses, what is it? Part of theidea is obvious: offering a justification for what one did does not involve any denialof responsibility, any claim to the effect, ‘It wasn’t me, it was him’; or ‘I couldn’t helpit,’ implying ‘It is unfair to hold me responsible.’ But let’s look at expressions such as‘That’s just an excuse’ to see if we can glean anything further about excuses fromthem.

Just what is meant by ‘That’s just an excuse’? A first guess might be that it means‘That is not a justification; it is only an excuse.’ But the odd thing is that it is reallysaying it is not an excuse (either)—not, that is, a good excuse, an excuse thatexculpates. When I say ‘That is just an excuse’ I am not acknowledging that excusingconditions apply. On the contrary, I am saying that you are trying (but withoutsuccess) to avoid doing something or to get yourself off the hook for something. Ialso insinuate that there is some dishonesty: you are pretending that p (e.g., doing xwould—you thought—be good for me) was the reason why you did x, but it was notyour reason at all.

This is one common meaning of ‘That’s just an excuse’: it is not the real reason.There is something fabricated about it (though the agent may be self-deceived ratherthan deliberately dishonest). Another (overlapping) meaning has been covered al-ready: ‘You’re just trying to avoid accepting responsibility.’ The insinuation is thatwhether or not what you assert is true, you should quit seeking refuge in excuses andaccept responsibility. Another meaning of ‘That’s just an excuse’ is that it is not agood reason, sincere though it may be. This seems to be the notion of ‘excuse’ atwork in a billboard slogan on the expressways in New York: ‘Buckle Up, NY! NoExcuses.’ The idea is that there are no good reasons not to wear your seat belt;instead of coming up with reasons not to wear one, we should just buckle up. Anexcuse here need not be a reason that is not your real reason. You might say you findit uncomfortable, you hate feeling confined, and that might well be true, and reallybe your reason for not wearing a seat belt. But it is not an adequate reason—not areason weighty enough to take seriously.

It is noteworthy that the word ‘excuse’ does not always have a negativeconnotation. This reflects the fact that most of us approve—or at least do notdisapprove—of the practice of offering an excuse in certain situations; for example,when invited repeatedly to get together with someone we really do not like. In somecircumstances it is fine ‘just to give an excuse’; in other situations it is dishonest, andperhaps insulting. (We can imagine someone feeling insulted that her friend wouldnot decline an invitation openly, saying that she did not feel sociable and just wanteda quiet evening at home, but instead offered an excuse.)

12. I will not attempt in this paper to sketch the implications of this survey of excusesfor defenses in criminal law. But to guard against misunderstanding, I would like, inclosing, to note one way in which excuses as I’ve been discussing them do not maponto excuses in criminal law. Some of what we classify as an excuse outside of thecontext of criminal law—‘I didn’t know’; ‘I didn’t mean to’—in criminal law does notcount as an excuse because it is not, strictly speaking, a ‘true defense’;30 ‘I didn’tknow’ denies the mens rea of knowledge or purpose. The same goes for ‘It was anaccident.’ ‘I did it while (involuntarily) hypnotized’ is likewise a failure of proof

30 See n. 6, supra.


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defense rather than a true defense, for the claim is that the defendant did not commita voluntary act, and thus that the actus reus requirement was not met.

I mention this to clarify that when I say that excuse and justification shouldfunction in law roughly as they do in everyday life, I do not mean that whatever is anexcuse in everyday life should be an excuse in law. This is so at least for the reasonjust indicated: some of what we classify as an excuse in everyday life will help get oneoff, but not by counting as a true defense. This need not be the only reason, however;since some moral wrongs are not (and should not be) legal wrongs, we should notassume that whatever excuses in an extra-legal context should in one way or anotherget one off the hook vis-a-vis the criminal law.

One thing is clear: the classification of excuses that I sketched in my openingsection is too narrow to cover all excuses. Whether it adequately covers excuses incriminal law is open to debate, a debate that I expect my commentators, AntonyDuff and Jeremy Horder, will pursue.

Acknowledgements For both their challenging comments and their helpful suggestions, I amgrateful to audiences at Tulane University, at a conference on moral psychology at the University ofTexas at Austin, at Texas Tech University, the University of Western Ontario, the University ofToronto, a conference at the University of Minnesota honoring Thomas E. Hill, Jr., and the BritishAcademy Conference on Philosophical Analysis and the Criminal Law. Special thanks are due toJeremy Horder and Antony Duff, who presented comments at the British Academy conference. Iwould also like to thank Justin M. Brown, Joshua Dressler, Jeffrie Murphy, and Kevin Toh for theirhelpful comments on an early draft of this paper, and Antony Duff for his suggestions for finalrevisions.

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